George Whitney
I have a daughter who is twelve, a son who is nine, a wonderful husband, and our beautiful George, who is no longer with us. We are the Whitney family!
When I found out that I was pregnant with George we were all overjoyed to be able to complete our little family. We went for our regular check-ups and scans, and everything was perfect. Then, at thirty-four weeks, the doctors weren’t happy with a scan as I had a lot of fluid and there was a measurement on baby they weren't happy with. They sent me to a professor at a women's hospital for a scan which showed he had no Corpus Callosum. It is something you can live without, and a lot of people don't know theirs is missing. We were told everything would be ok. I also went to a children's hospital to have an MRI scan on baby and it still didn't pick anything up.
At thirty-eight weeks I fainted and fell in the middle of the road, after which I started having tightenings. I went to hospital for observations for a few days and was then sent home. I was still having the tightenings and went back and forth a few times to the hospital. Then I was sent home again. I went back in when my waters started to trickle, so they induced me and broke my waters. I have never seen water like it: there was so much!
Twelve hours later, our baby boy came into the world on the 14th of August 2018, weighing 6lbs 3oz. He was finding it difficult to breathe on his own and they took me to Special Care. I knew something wasn't right as his little fingers were fused together, but I still didn't know what was wrong. After I had the treatment I needed, I went to see our gorgeous boy. He had started to have seizures and the hospital staff were doing everything they could for him.
A few days later they said they’d done genetic testing, and the results would take a while to come back. Ten days later the results came back to say that baby George had trisomy 18.
I asked what his life expectancy was with that diagnosis and was told anything up to twelve months. After that, we worked with the medical team and had training on how to feed and care for George, so that we could bring him home to make memories with all the family. Two weeks later George passed away comfortably at home on the 7th of October 2018.